Book Review

By Derryll White

Larrson, Åsa (2008).  The Black Path.

A devout reader should only stay away from the enfolding cloak of Swedish noir fiction for so long.  And when one chooses to submerge again, Swedish noir by Karin Fossum or Åsa Larrson cannot be beat.  Larrson grew up in northern Sweden and her novels often assume the harsh covering of a Canadian winter – cold, icy, and a little foreboding.  Like her favourite character, Attorney Rebecka Martinsson, the author was a tax lawyer before she became a fulltime writer.

Larrson excellently weaves the back story of the characters in ‘The Black Path’ into the text.  The reader is aware that there are two volumes preceding this one, but does not feel there are missing parts to the unfolding journey of Inspector Anna-Maria Mella and Attorney Rebecka Martinsson.

The author pays attention to the little things – nuance, inflection, taste.  Both Anna-Maria and Rebecka become lifelike.  They are driven by reflections from the past as much as the demands of the present.  The characters come off the page in dark swirls, the same as the foreboding lime trees in each chapter heading.  The texture and temperature of northern Sweden’s hard winters also emboldens the story, pulls in the Canadian reader who is sitting before the warm wood fire at -23°, captured by Larrson’s psychological dark probings.

Åsa Larrson is a superb writer.  She runs many stories simultaneously, and constructs personal character insights within the separate stories, but the reader does not get lost.  She continuously knots everything together, even when the characters are on separate continents.  She has to, as the psychological interplay she creates is intense.

As stated, this is the third novel in a series. Larrson weaves in and out of Sami consciousness as the story develops.  Perhaps there is more of Lapland in the preceding works but she uses the lapsed mythology and memory well, particularly with Ester Korlles who paints and imagines in a Sami dimernsion

‘The Black Path’ is a great read and will invariably take the reader to used bookstores looking for other Åsa Larrson works.

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Excerpts from the novel:

GRIEF – She stood there leaning against the car.  Grief overwhelmed her.  As if it were some creature that had been lying in wait for her, waiting for her to get out of the car.  That’s how it always was.  She was always completely unprepared.

Why can’t I be happy? she thought.  Happy that I had them for as long as I did.  Nothing is forever.  God, it’s so long ago.  You can’t grieve forever.  There really is something wrong with me.

MEMORY – And those memories you do have, thought Rebecka.  Do they really help?  It’s just a few pictures in an album in your head, after all.  In between those scenes you do remember there are hundreds, thousands of scenes you’ve forgotten.  So are you remembering the truth?

AGE – She’s walking arm in arm with an older man.  Much older.  He’s bony, in the way that old men are.  Death is making its presence felt in his appearance, his skeleton I s pressing against his skin from the inside, saying soon there’ll only be me left.  The skin has very little resistance left these days.  It’s stretched over his forehead where his cranium bulges outward without a hint of elasticity.  His cheekbones are sticking out above his cheeks, which have collapsed inward.  The bones of his wrists are very prominent

MEMORY – That’s what’s difficult, thought Ester, fitting new weights to the bar.  When Mauri comes up to me and looks at the pictures.  Now I’ve started to think about my aunt, all the other memories will come too.  At first you remember something that isn’t dangerous at all, but behind it all the difficult stuff is pushing its way forward.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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